Seat tracks are used in passenger aircraft to anchor passenger seats to the airframe of the aircraft. Conventional seat tracks typically have a “hat” design (a pair of outwardly-extending top flanges and a pair of outwardly-extending middle flanges which together form a top cord and a pair of outwardly-extending bottom flanges which form a bottom cord). The middle flanges are used to attach the track to the airframe.
One of the limitations of the conventional aircraft seat tracks is that the top, middle and bottom flanges are thick to overcome load instability. This renders excessive weight of about 400 lbs. to the tracks, resulting in loss of about $120,000 in revenue for each aircraft per year. Moreover, seat tracks are typically extruded. Extrusion is optimal for objects which have a constant or uniform cross-sectional geometry; because an optimized seat track would be thicker at the middle than at the ends of the track since loads are greater at the middle, fabrication of an optimized extruded track would require extensive machining of a large block of metal such as titanium.